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Original Courses Developed and Taught:
Dance as Political Activation, UC Riverside, Department of Dance
Worldbuilding Through Performance, UC Riverside, Department of Dance
Dance Entrepreneurship, UC Riverside, Department of Dance
Dance and Popular Culture at UC Riverside, Department of Dance
Intimacy, Consent, and Boundaries, Cal Arts School of Dance, School of Theater
Intimacy for the Screen, Cal Arts School of Film, TV, Video
I teach studio based classes in improvisation, composition, contemporary techniques as well as theory based classes in dance studies, critical dance writing, and dance history. Technique classes use several techniques and modalities including: Bartenieff Funamentals, Laban, Release Technique, and Body-Mind-Centering. Classes often consists of gentle floor work exercises, center work, and phrase work. Together we work on finding gravity, weight, and space in our joints so we can move with with power and ease.
Improvisation and composition courses introduce various exercises and tools to access and develop imagination within dance-making and enrich movement vocabulary. We work to co-create an experimental container to explore movement in solo, duet, and ensemble formats. I encourage students to stretch themselves to explore the wide scope of what dancing can be and mean.
Independent Workshops:
In addition to these courses, I teach independent workshops through various studios and platforms that I have developed through my research.
Choreographic Research Methods
Whether you’re working on a specific project or just want to learn tools and methods for how to conduct rigorous artistic research, this workshop will explore several practice-as-research methodologies to assist choreographers and performance makers. Participants will learn the tools necessary to conceptualize a research project from initial inquiry to its dissemination using the model of question, method, delivery, medium. Using the feedback structure of observation, reflection, discussion, evaluation, recommendation we will collaboratively workshop each others projects.
Intimacy for the Apocalypse
Intimacy for the Apocalypse asks: What are the new constellations, networks, and strategies for experiencing, sharing, and creating intimacy? This workshop experiments with methods for rehearsing for new ways of being in relation with ourselves and one another; these are methods for engaging with nonlinear time, iterative language, and emergent fractal thought patterns. These strategies allow us to not only disrupt, but transcend Western capitalistic logics of narrativizing, linearity, and individual identity. We will engage with micro movements, energetic tuning scores, and emergent text constructions to collectively develop a shared language which will serve as material to propose a new framework for intimacy grounded in emergence, slowness, and economies of attention. We do not know what will come next, or how we will get there, but we can allow it to radically unfold if we practice deep noticing.
Manifesting Hysteria: Finding a Liberating Practice
Using the twelve physical hysterical “symptoms” I’ve codified through my research into hysteria as a performance strategy, this workshop explores abstracting pathologized symptoms from their emotional and historical contexts to develop an embodied physical practice.
I have taught classes and workshops at SOZO-Visions in Motion and Ponderosa in Germany, Freeskewl.com, Dance Studies Association Conference, UCLA Department of World Arts & Culture/Dance, UC Riverside Department of Dance, and Cal Arts Schools of Theater and Dance,